From Pariahs to Partners: How parents and their allies changed New York City's child welfare system

David Tobis

Abstract

In 1995 New York City had one of the worst child welfare systems in the United States. The city’s system struggled under 20 class-action lawsuits and 11 court orders or stipulations resulting from these suits. Elisa Izquierdo, a 6-year old girl involved in the child welfare system, was killed by her mother while other families struggled without help until their situation exploded. The city’s response was to place children into foster care at an unprecedented rate, reaching 50,000 children in care in the early 1990s. Less traumatic and less expensive interventions could have protected many of t ... More

In 1995 New York City had one of the worst child welfare systems in the United States. The city’s system struggled under 20 class-action lawsuits and 11 court orders or stipulations resulting from these suits. Elisa Izquierdo, a 6-year old girl involved in the child welfare system, was killed by her mother while other families struggled without help until their situation exploded. The city’s response was to place children into foster care at an unprecedented rate, reaching 50,000 children in care in the early 1990s. Less traumatic and less expensive interventions could have protected many of these children and kept them safely within their families. In response to that situation, David Tobis and an anonymous donor created the Child Welfare Fund, which helped nurture a movement of parent organizers to reform New York’s child welfare system. For the first time in the history of the United States, a movement developed of parents who have been embroiled in the child welfare system. Their efforts, working with their allies including courageous and visionary commissioners, brought about unprecedented and long-lasting improvements including legal representation for parents, assistance to struggling children and families, and fewer than 14,000 children in New York City’s foster care system today. The parents in this story were victims of domestic violence, homelessness, and poverty. Some became dependent on drugs. They all had the crushing, enraging, and at times transforming experience of having their children taken from them and put into foster care by child protective services. Many of these parents entered drug treatment programs, left abusive relationships, got jobs, filed lawsuits, and were reunited with their children. Some took the next step and were trained as parent organizers. They learned how to fight effectively against child welfare policies and programs that left families victimized by a system that was supposed to help them. This book focuses on the lives of six mothers who had been pariahs and then became partners with child welfare commissioners, social workers, lawyers, foundation officers, and child welfare agency executives. It recounts how their courage and resilience brought about the most significant changes in the history of New York’s child welfare system.

End Matter

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